Feminist perspectives on global politics, in poems

We have just finished teaching a course on feminist perspectives on global politics at the University of Tampere, with an international group of students with different disciplinary backgrounds. During the course, we introduced the students to a wide range of readings on feminist IR, and towards the end of the course Saara gave them a creative assignment, originally picked up from Elina Penttinen’s pedagogical tools. The results, based on the students’ readings of some of the contributors and/or readers of this blog, were so amazing that we want to share the work with you.

Here is the assignment that was given to the class:

1. Choose any text from the course moodle

2. Read it carefully

3. Construct a poem using only words in the text

The poem can be any length, but should capture the essence of the original text (the main argument etc.), write by hand or on a computer, remember, you can also play with the layout…

And here are some of the results. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did.

Note 1: The authors’ names and the reference to the text that has inspired the writing can be found at the end of each poem. We have posted only those poems that we got permission for from the poets themselves, and some gave their permission only to anonymous publication.

Note 2: Apologies if the layout of the post is not perfect, that is Tiina’s fault.

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– Iina-Eerika Grönlund –

(Inspired by Smith, Nicola J. & Donna Lee (2015) ’What’s queer about political science?’ British Journal of Politics and International Relations 17, 49–63.)

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– Janina Modes –

(Inspired by Shepherd, Laura and Lucy Ferguson (2011). “Gender, Governance and Power: Finding the Global at the Local Level”, Globalizations 8(2), 127–133.)

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– Lucija Mulalic –

(Inspired by Liddle, Joanna and Shirin Rai (1998) “Feminism, Imperialism and Orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian woman’”, Women’s History Review 7(4), 495-520.)

(Inspired by the transcript of “My Body Is a Prison of Pain so I Want to Leave It Like a Mystic But I Also Love It & Want it to Matter Politically.” from Johanna Hedva’s lecture at the event by the “Women’s Center for Creative Work at Human Resources”, 2015)